


Apocalypse Supply+Hardware

by katrinawritesthings



Category: SHINee
Genre: Brotp, NB, Nonbinary, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10670721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: zombie infection apocalypse whatever au where taem lives in an abandoned target all by himself and trades with everyoneThe way the A-team would talk about how lowkey unsettling Taemin was made Jonghyun think of gruff silences and intimidating scowls, not an almost surreal kind of bubbly indifference to the weight of the situation. All he’d said when Jonghyun pointed out that he could have killed him instead of the infected was, “Ha ha yeah, I know, right? Good thing I didn’t.”tumblrtw for minor character death mentions nd zombie shit





	Apocalypse Supply+Hardware

“Fuck fuck fuck, oh my god,” Jonghyun hisses, fumbling to stuff his gun into his bag and pull out his knife instead. This is bullshit. This is such fucking bullshit. He knew he should’ve put up more of a fight when Kangin told him and a few others to make the trip out to the Target dude since the other group all went MIA. They’re known around their base as the B-Team for a reason; if the usual group of people that know the routes and go out regularly didn’t make it back last time, what the fuck made the others think it was a good idea for _them_ to go? He swears, if he somehow makes it back there as the lone survivor, he’s going to give them all one hell of a piece of his mind. **  
**

He hears the clicker croaking around the corner of the fence he’s hidden himself behind for the moment and stills, breathless. Fuck the infected. This is the last one alive out of the group that attacked them, but still. Fuck the other ones, too. They killed the rest of his squad and left him out here alone.

Whatever. He can do this. He just has to stab it right in its creepy, mushroom-encrusted face. Easy as pie. He wonders if the Target dude still has any old pie filling or whatever in there, maybe some graham crackers. He’s sure he could figure out some sort of trade. The clicker snarls even closer now and as soon as its ugly head pokes into view Jonghyun lunges forward and jams his knife right in there, grunting with the effort.

It makes an absolutely fucking horrendous noise as it dies, groans and gurgles, and Jonghyun grimaces as he yanks his knife out and wipes it on the bottom of his pants. Disgusting. He’s walking back onto the sidewalk with his knife still in hand, wary even though he knows that all of the infected are dead, when another infected tackles him from the side.

“Fuck--” He stumbles, drops his knife, and slams into the ground; it’s purely instinct and reflex that save him from getting his nose bitten off as the runner pins him down and snaps at his face. He puts one hand on it’s greasy forehead and the other on it’s neck, taking the blows from the thing’s hands in favor of keeping its face away from him. Damn it. What the fuck. Where the fuck did this thing come from? He struggles to kick at the runner’s stomach and figure out how he could have missed it at the same time. It’s wearing a dark blue, bloodstained hoodie and it has another knife jabbed into it’s side; Jonghyun recognizes it as Kikwang’s. He groans. Useless dead asshole. Couldn’t even finish the job before he got eaten. Jonghyun knew that he never liked that dude for a reason.

He takes his hand away from the runner’s forehead to grope for the knife as his only chance of surviving this bullshit. He is not going to fucking die before he tells everyone back at camp how pissed he is at them for sending him off to die.

He’s probably going to die right now, as he grabs the handle of the knife and it snaps off in his hand, leaving the blade embedded in the infected. _Ugh._ All he wanted to do today was count some bullets, eat one of his stashed bags of trail mix, and watch for birds. That’s it. That’s all he wanted. And now--

A bolt, a thick, heavy, metal crossbow bolt, pierces through one side of the infected’s head and comes out of the other. It lurches half off him and dies on the floor; Jonghyun whips his head up to look for the owner of the bolt, not at all relieved. Who the fuck knows who they could be? Jonghyun sure as fuck doesn’t know anyone that favors a crossbow, or that would risk a shot so fucking close to his own human head. First he finds thick boots stepping towards him, then ripped light brown skinny jeans that look older than the infection itself, then a rosary bracelet, then a red plaid button up with the sleeves rolled up, and then, finally, a pretty pretty face with a lazy smile and wavy blonde hair.

“Ha ha, hey,” they say, holding out a hand. “I’m Tae. That was pretty cool, right? Like in a movie or whatever.”

~

“You okay, gumdrop? Sure you’re not bitten?” Tae stops in front of the gated fence around the perimeter of the Target, squinting at Jonghyun suspiciously and poking him with the point of his crossbow. Jonghyun ducks out of the way quickly; Tae’s finger is still on the trigger and nothing he’s done so far has made Jonghyun trust that he won’t just pull it to see what would happen. Then he shakes his head, hiking his bag more over his shoulder.

“I’m still just… not entirely sure that _you’re_ the Target dude,” he says. He’d had a much different idea of the Target dude this whole time; someone that secured a whole fucking superstore by themselves and trades with literally everyone in a sizeable radius shouldn’t be this… cute. The way the A-team would talk about how lowkey unsettling he was made Jonghyun think of gruff silences and intimidating scowls, not an almost surreal kind of bubbly indifference to the weight of the situation. All he’d said when Jonghyun pointed out that he could have killed him instead of the infected was, “Yeah, I know, right? Good thing I didn’t.” He’d been laughing and joking the whole way here like Jonghyun didn’t just watch four of the people he’d been living with for years just die. It’s borderline fucking disturbing.

“Are they still calling me the Target _dude_?” Tae asks, not even frowning, just tsking disapprovingly. He tugs Jonghyun’s elbow and makes him turn around; Jonghyun hears him entering in at least three different combination lock codes before he’s allowed to turn again. “I keep telling them not to do that,” Tae says conversationally as he shoos Jonghyun inside like he’s inviting him in for afternoon tea. “I’m not a dude. Well, not most of the time. Sometimes. Demi. It fades in and out. I still don’t like gendered terms, though. They could at least call me the Target _babe_.” He closes the gate behind himself and clicks all of his locks back into place. Jonghyun kind of stares at him.

“I’ll be sure to get on that,” he says, mostly to give himself time to think so Tae doesn’t nag him for being quiet again. Holy shit. Gender shit. Jonghyun remembers when he cared about gender shit, when he was young and super super queer and probably some kind of trans. He almost had it figured out, too, before everything went to shit, and since then he’s been too focused on not dying to focus on the maybe five percent of him that didn’t feel all male. Now he’s just regular super queer, totally pansexual and a little bit aromantic. That’s easier to deal with now, anyway. Someone is always asking if he wants to bang and no one is trying to find love, so it works out. He follows Tae through the parking lot, weaving through rusted cars and heeding his warnings about which ones are rigged and not. Hmm. _His_. If Tae is still doing the whole gender thing, then maybe he should ask. “Uh,” he says, and Tae turns with a pleasant little hum, “Pronouns?” he asks.

Taemin looks at him for a moment, hand on the handle of one of the doors into his store. His smile grows, wide and giddy, like he hasn’t had this chance in years. He probably hasn’t.

“Any,” he says brightly, and pulls the door open until it stops just wide enough for him to slip through the chains keeping it half shut with ease. Jonghyun fits himself through them with more of a struggle; he’s shorter, but thicker, and he whacks his elbow on the doorframe once or twice. At least infected would probably get tangled as fuck in here. He stumbles inside, foot getting stuck on one of the lower chains for a second, and when he looks up, he finds himself in what used to be the kids’ section of the store. There’s still a giant poster for the newest Pokémon game hanging on the wall. Next to it is another, smaller poster of--Jonghyun does a doubletake--Tae.

“Taerget, your one and only store for all of your zombie dystopian needs,” it says over a picture of a younger looking Tae making a duckface at the camera. Underneath it, “’ll trade you food and bullets and supplies for other food and supplies,” underneath that, “Don’t be an asshole. No killing allowed. Especially me,” and finally, “Wipe your feet.”

Yeah, this Tae is pretty fucking weird. Jonghyun looks slowly away from the poster to real Tae, who’s watching him patiently. He shrugs and takes two steps forward; Tae holds his crossbow out again and bars his path. It takes a few seconds of him squinting at Tae in confusion and Tae looking at him expectantly before he glances back to the poster and then at the welcome mat underneath him. He wipes his shoes on the carpet slowly until Tae beams at him and lets him forward again.

“I got here like four years after the infection hit and the printers were still full of ink,” he says happily, gesturing at the poster of himself as he walks down the Barbie aisle.

~

When Tae finally waves Jonghyun into what he assumes used to be the entertainment center of the store, Jonghyun has started to think that the path he took was so long and complicated on purpose. There’s no way it should’ve taken them five minutes to get here. He supposes Tae has certain aisles blocked off and paths changed to make his own personal maze, and he also supposes that Tae took him the long way around just to keep him lost. Great for security, he guesses, but Jonghyun is literally going to get lost and die if an infected somehow makes its way in here.

“Alright, lets see,” Tae says, clapping his hands together. He walks behind the beaten up cash register and sits pleasantly, grabbing a pair of glasses sitting next to the broken phone. They’re fake as fuck, but Tae puts them on anyway. Then he takes out a little notepad and pencil. “You’re new around here, right gumdrop? Just passing through?” he asks. Jonghyun blinks.

“Uh, no?” he says. “I’m from the south military base, the one that was abandoned, I don’t know, five years ago?”

“What, Kangin’s place?” Tae asks, looking up for a second with a confused little tilt of the head. “Where are the usual four?”

“They never came back after last time,” Jonghyun mumbles. “I think….” He’d been thinking about the infected that attacked him earlier. He’s pretty sure he recognized that dark blue hoodie. He shakes his head and sighs before he continues on with that train of thought. A little pout puffs up Tae’s lips.

“They were so cute, though,” he whines. “And I gave them those cute socks I found in the back last winter.” He looks down at his notepad and scribbles something quickly. When he looks back up, it’s with a shrug. “Well, I”ll go out and find my shit again later.”

“It’s not your shit anymore,” Jonghyun frowns. Technically, it’s _his_ now, since his group was sent out to both trade from Tae and figure out what happened to the A-team. He bets if he went back and searched all the gross infected bodies from the group that attacked them he could come back with the stuff from today _and_ then. Tae cocks a brow at him though, looking all too amused for this discussion that they’re having right now.

“It is if I get to it first,” he singsongs. He pats his crossbow gently; Jonghyun remembers the empty gun in his bag and huffs. That’s not fair at all. Maybe he’ll be able to work out a deal about that shit when they get to it. “Anyway,” Tae says, “look around. Bullets are in the Wii aisle because that one had the least smashed locks for some reason… clothes and shit are hung up in the charger and headphone aisle… scrap metal and string and bottles and shit are in the laptop cases…. You’ll figure everything out. And here’s a list of what’s in my garden right now.” He holds out an old piece of paper with a little grid on it. Jonghyun takes it slowly.

“You have a _garden?_ ” he asks. Since fucking when? No one ever brought back anything from a _garden._ The list has strawberries, tangerines, apples, grapes, beans, potatoes, olives, pumpkins…? He glances up at Tae with a quick incredulous look, then back down. Judging by the little frowny face in pencil next to the word, they aren’t in season, but still. He _does_ have pumpkins sometimes and that’s just fucking… surreal.

“I mean, yeah,” Taemin grins. He looks smug as fuck behind his little register. “I have the whole garden center.” He gestures over Jonghyun’s shoulder at another set of doors behind a few aisles. If Jonghyun gets on his tiptoes and squints, he can just see some green through the boards and chains covering them. He has no idea how Taemin gets in there. He doesn’t think he’ll ever learn, either. Taemin leans back in his chair and picks up his notepad to start scribbling things again. “Take your time, gumdrop,” he smiles, not looking up. “Call me if you need me to unlock anything.” Jonghyun watches him for another moment, then turns and looks at his little store.

When he walks up to one of the glass cases and peeps inside its shattered top, he first finds a length of mildly sturdy looking rope. Sitting on top of it is a little folded piece of paper with a “C” on it and a number next to that. Jonghyun has no idea what that means, but the rest of the shit in here all have their own little signs as well. He shrugs, figuring that Taemin will explain this shit to him when he tries to trade anyway.

~

“How’d you even find me out here earlier anyway?” Jonghyun asks, pausing in his attempts to tug the backpack off of a dead infected with a blue hoodie. It’s at least a ten minute walk from here to Taemin’s Target. How the fuck was he able to show up _just in time_ to save Jonghyun? He looks up to find Taemin, who’s busy pulling a bloodstained shirt off of someone that was alive an hour ago. Jonghyun grimaces at the sight, at how Taemin is so chill and pleasant as he lets the body drop back to the asphalt. It’s what they’re here for--Jonghyun had jack shit to trade with so they struck up a deal to go find his old team members and split their supplies--but his pep still makes him uneasy. He thinks this is also what the others meant when they talked about how unsettling Taemin was.

“I have a little sniper nest on the top of the building,” Taemin says as he straightens up. “I saw you guys coming from one way and the infected coming from the other, figured I should help. I could wash this, right gumdrop?” He turns to Jonghyun with a questioning look, holding up the shirt for Jonghyun to see. Jonghyun looks between him and the large smudges of dirt and blood on the fabric.

“I mean…,” he starts. If Taemin is asking, that probably means that he has the resources to. The clothes hung up in his little store did look cleaner than usual. “I guess?” He shrugs and adds the backpack to his pile on the sidewalk. Taemin looks at the shirt for another moment, then nods happily and folds it up neat and proper. Jonghyun watches absently as he turns to the next body with a disturbing briskness of how he goes about his actions. He wants to ask how Taemin can be so nonchalant about this, but he also doesn’t think he wants to know the answer. “Why do you keep calling me gumdrop?” is what he asks instead.

“These are nice boots,” Taemin mumbles instead of answering right away. He sits on the ground and holds his foot up next to the body’s, comparing sizes. They’re too small for him, it looks like, but he starts unlacing them anyway. “You never told me your name,” he says, not looking up from his work. It takes a second for Jonghyun register that that was an answer to his question; when he does realize, he frowns. Has he really not…? He thinks back to before, going through their conversations in his head. Holy shit. He really hasn’t.

“It’s Jonghyun,” he says as Taemin yanks the first boot off and drops the foot. After, Taemin looks up at him with raised eyebrows and half of a little smirk.

“Good to know, gumdrop,” he says. He squints inside of the boot at the label. “You know anyone that’s a size eight?” he asks, holding up the boot. Jonghyun shakes his head. He _did,_ an hour ago. Taemin shrugs and gets to work tugging the other one off. Jonghyun… doesn’t get him. He decides not to push it again and jogs to the corner because he remembers an infected chasing someone around there before they both died. Finding them both on the floor, he grabs one backpack and sighs at the broken strap hanging loosely off of the infected’s shoulder. It was over three months ago. Who knows where the fuck the backpack is now.

Taemin is tying off the top of his bag of stuff when Jonghyun rounds the corner again. He waves cheerily; Jonghyun breathes a deep breath and slips passed him to gather up his own shit to take back. He really just wants to get his trading done and then go back to his own base and never come out this way again. This is really starting to fuck with him. He hikes his four bags over his shoulders--he should have accepted Taemin’s offer for a bigger bag earlier--and struggles to stand up, and then a hand on his shoulder forces him back down.

He thuds onto his ass and looks up, angry and incredulous.

“What the f--”

“Shh,” Taemin hisses. His crossbow is raised, pointed at a low wall across the street. Jonghyun falls silent at the look on his face. There’s no cheeky smile, no lazy chill; his eyes are cold, jaw set, mouth tight. Jonghyun looks between him and the wall, then settles on him. That’s fucking terrifying. It’s completely silent for an eternity’s worth of seconds, and then a faint rustle from the other side of the wall makes Jonghyun take his eyes away from the survivor above him. Everything is still and silent for another second until a tiny, tiny, tiny little paw peeps up over the stone.

“Oh,” Taemin says as the cat jumps up onto the wall. He lowers his crossbow and in an instant, that easy smile is back on his lips. “Kitty,” he whispers excitedly. He looks down at Jonghyun with bright eyes. “She’s so fucking cute, look at her--sweetie, c’mere,” he coos, taking gentle steps across the street. “Kitty kitty….” Jonghyun watches him inch closer, even more put off than before. The cat looks at him for a moment and then flicks its tail and slinks away. Taemin deflates, groaning in defeat. “Kitty no, come back, I love you,” he whines.

“How the fuck do you do that?”

The words leave his mouth before he even realizes that he’s saying him. Taemin turns to him, politely confused, and Jonghyun frowns at the ground for a second before continuing. He’s already started; might as well finish.

“How do you just--act like everything is okay?” he asks. “Like, I know you know how bad things are. I know you’ve seen some shit and killed some men and--” He cuts himself short when Taemin walks back to him. He leans back a little bit, but all Taemin does is extend his hand lazily to help Jonghyun up. Jonghyun takes is hesitantly. “You have to...,” he mumbles, trying to find the right words to express the truth. “You have to be at least a little fucked up by all of this,” he says. He can’t be able to switch like that so easily. Once he’s on his feet, Taemin moves his hand to his collar instead.

“Um,” Jonghyun says. Taemin twists his fingers into his shirt; Jonghyun takes a step back. Taemin walks him back another four without dropping his friendly smile until he’s backed up against the side of a building and incredibly fucking disturbed. “Look, dude--”

“I am extremely fucked up and scarred and traumatized by the things I’ve seen and done and had done to me,” Taemin says brightly. He’s smiling, but his fingers grip Jonghyun’s shirt even tighter. His smile doesn’t exactly reach his eyes, either. “Shut the fuck up,” he says, “and let me deal with it my own way.” He holds Jonghyun’s gaze for another few seconds before he lets go and grabs his bag off of the floor. “Come on, gumdrop, I wanna get back before too late. Sometimes there’s a squirrel behind the store and I like to watch it fuck around for an hour.”

~

“This is completely overpriced.”

“It is not.”

“Is too,” Jonghyun frowns. “Six regular backpacks for this kinda big one? What the fuck.” He clutches his empty backpacks to his chest protectively. This is bullshit. He almost wants to demand to see the manager. Taemin would probably play along with that for a few minutes. “I’ll give you three,” he says instead. The bigger backpack probably doesn’t even carry as much as two backpacks. Taemin sips some water from his bendy straw (he’d trade it for a yoyo, he’d said, but no one has had one yet) and pushes his fake glasses up his nose.

“Four and your shotgun bullets,” he says. Jonghyun’s jaw drops in outrage. That’s even more bullshit.

“What do you need bullets for?” he asks. “You don’t even use guns.”

“Well, I can’t run out of bullets to trade to people that _do_ use guns,” Taemin says, shrugging. “Four backpacks and your shotgun ammo. Final offer.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Jonghyun huffs. Taemin grins at him, smug and satisfied with his ridiculous pricing, and leans back in his chair.

“I have a system,” he says, tapping the little piece of papers from the stuff that Jonghyun already bought off of him. Jonghyun huffs again. His system is bullshit. He’s manipulating the supply and demand works for a backpack. And Jonghyun is seriously considering it, damn it. He sighs, frowning at his fingers as they tap over the counter. It’s not like they _need_ as many backpacks anymore, since they just lost four people, but still. Backpacks are important. And he wants this big one for himself. While he thinks, Taemin opens up a little drawer in his desk and pulls out a plastic baggie. He opens it, pulls out what looks like a little green leaf, and eats it. Jonghyun loses his train of thought.

“What are those?” he asks. Taemin takes out another thing and pops it into his mouth with a crunch.

“Kale chips,” he says. Jonghyun squints at him. What.

“You have _kale_?” he asks. “Kale _chips?_ ”

“Yes,” Taemin says, “that’s what I just said. Not for sale.” He eats another two as he tugs the bag closer to himself where Jonghyun can’t reach. Jonghyun stares at the bag, and then at him. How the fuck did he make kale chips? And why the fuck would he even decide to grow kale years after a zombie apocalypse. He looks again at Taemin, at his tight jeans, his plaid shirt, his fake glasses, his obnoxious better-than-you attitude. Suddenly everything all clicks into place and Jonghyun gasps.

“You were a hipster,” he whispers. Taemin stops chewing his kale chip for a moment, blinking behind his fake glasses. He swallows thickly, eyes darting to the side with guilt.

“Um,” he says, “what?”

“You _were,_ ” Jonghyun hisses, and then he’s laughing, practically cackling at the blush that rises up in Taemin’s cheeks. He knew wasting so much time analyzing the pasts of the people in his base would pay off someday. “Holy shit,” he says. “You were the biggest fucking hipster ever, weren’t you?”

“You can’t prove--”

“What music did you listen to?” Jonghyun cuts off Taemin’s defensive snap with a grin, leaning over the counter to get closer. Taemin opens his mouth, and then hesitates.

“I--it was like--west underground American--you probably never heard-- _fuck_.” Jonghyun laughs even louder as Taemin realizes that he’s given himself away and puts his face in his hands. “Listen,” he says, looking up, and then he doesn’t say anything after that because he puts his head back down. This is great.

“I bet you ate quinoa,” Jonghyun grins.

“We should finish up our trading, gumdrop,” Taemin says loudly. He stands up and grabs his little notebook pointedly; Jonghyun cocks a brow at how his blush has spread over his nose as well.

“I bet you know how to pronounce it right, too,” he says. Taemin moves like he’s going to throw the notebook at him, then stops and takes a quick breath.

“Look, I’ll give you the big backpack for three little ones if you shut up about it.” He grabs the bag instead and thrusts it over the counter. Jonghyun takes it with a smug grin and hands over three of his. He doesn’t think he’s felt this great in years.


End file.
